Tag: NDP

News Politics

Ontario Premier Says She Can’t Win Election

The current premier of Ontario says there will be a new premier after the election on June 7 and it most certainly won’t be her.
That was a very surprising announcement.
Premier Kathleen Wynne leads the Ontario Liberal Party. She is one of three main candidates vying for the spot of premier in the upcoming election. The other two main candidates are Doug Ford Jr., who leads the Progressive Conservative (PC) party of Ontario and Andrea Horwath, who leads the Ontario New Democratic Party (NDP).

News Politics

Big “Wynne Win” Surprises Pollsters

It came as a big surprise: Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were elected on Thursday night with a majority government.

The people who predict how elections will turn out didn’t see that coming.

Until the last days before the election, the odds were that either the Liberals would win a minority government or the PC party, led by Tim Hudak, would win.

News Politics

Surprising Win For Liberals In BC Election

The Liberals unexpectedly won the provincial election in British Columbia on Tuesday surprising many people, who thought the New Democratic Party (NDP) would win.

The Liberals and the NDP are two of Canada’s biggest political parties.

The Liberals were already in power in B.C.; after this election, they will stay in power.

Being “in power” in this case means they are responsible for making many of the important decisions involving laws and money in the province. It also means that their leader is the Premier of the province.

Many people—including political experts—thought the New Democratic Party would win the election. Not only did the Liberals win, but they won a “majority government.” That means they have more seats in the legislature than all of the other parties combined.

News Politics

Justin Trudeau New Leader Of Federal Liberals

Justin Trudeau is the new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Justin Trudeau is the son of Pierre Trudeau, who was the charismatic Prime Minister of Canada for more than 15 years in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

A new kind of Trudeaumania swept the Liberal Party on Sunday, where Justin Trudeau won the leadership of the party by a landslide.

He took more than 80 per cent of the vote, winning handily on the first ballot.

Trudeau has a big challenge—to get the Liberal party focused again, and eventually to get it back in power.

He wants to be Canada’s next prime minister.

Breaking News News Politics

Giant Slumber Party In The House Of Commons

The government of Canada had a sleepover, and all of the MPs were invited.

In fact, attendance was mandatory.

What’s really happened is that the Members of Parliament stayed up all night working.

They were voting on a bill, but the way they did it was very unusual—and very interesting.

It all started when Stephen Harper’s Conservative government introduced Bill C-38.

Bill C-38 is an enormous 425-page bill covering all kinds of things including budget items.

The opposition party (the NDP) wanted to protest the fact that the government bundled all of those extra items into the bill.

They say that when too many items are bundled that way, none of the items can be looked over and properly discussed.

News Politics Technology

How Much Did Fighter Jets Really Cost?

In 2010, new F-35 Fighter Jets were ordered by Canada’s Defence Department (the department that oversees the country’s military).The new jets were supposed to cost around $15-billion.

Now, however, the Auditor General of Canada has said that the 65 planes will actually cost $25-billion, $10-billion more than expected. The Auditor General’s office watches over Government spending.

NDP and Liberal MPs (Members of Parliament) have accused the Defence Department (part of the Conservative government in power) of “hiding” the extra $10-billion in their financial reports when the 2011 election was coming up. Some are saying that the Conservatives wanted to keep it secret so people wouldn’t see the real costs and not vote for them.

Now that it is in the open, some MPs have demanded that Canada’s Defence Minister, Peter MacKay, step down from his job.

The Defence Department has explained their position saying that their original estimate did not include many costs such as operations (day-to-day expenses), people to run the project, or a “contingency fund” (in this case, this refers to money set aside for unknown problems in the project). Some of that money was already recorded in other budgets.